


Human Stuff

by littlefanthings



Series: Season 7 and Beyond: Missing Moments [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Contains a scene from 7x11, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Mostly Fitz’s imagination running away with him, Not much actual angst, Season/Series 07, Spoilers for 7x13, series finale spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25889359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlefanthings/pseuds/littlefanthings
Summary: “Leopold Fitz has been through more than one difficult situation. He’d been drowned, shot, beaten, blown up. Actually, he’d been blown up multiple times, now that he thought about it.The point being that Leopold Fitz, or just ‘Fitz’ as he greatly preferred, was no wimp. He just wasn’t a huge fan of blood. Or fluids. Any kind of body part that was meant to remain inside a human body, he frankly could very much do without seeing.”Fitz and Simmons find out the blood work results, and it’s definitely not what they were expecting.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Series: Season 7 and Beyond: Missing Moments [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886059
Comments: 10
Kudos: 94





	Human Stuff

Leopold Fitz has been through more than one difficult situation. He’d been drowned, shot, beaten, blown up. Actually, he’d been blown up multiple times, now that he thought about it.

The point being that Leopold Fitz, or just “Fitz” as he greatly preferred, was no wimp. He just wasn’t a huge fan of blood. Or fluids. Any kind of body part that was meant to remain inside a human body, he frankly could very much do without seeing. But it was his dislike of blood that made his face blanch white and his stomach do a slight flip when he walked into the makeshift lab to see his wife with a needle in her arm drawing her own blood.

“Um, Jemma?” he asked, head tilted away to avert his gaze from the small tube currently filling with his wife’s blood. “What...uh...what are you doing?”

Jemma turned her head to him with a smile, as though she wasn’t currently being drained of vital fluids via a sharp, pointy object. “Oh! Sorry, I was hoping to have this done by the time you came in here.” Jemma quickly grabbed a small cotton ball, held it to the puncture mark, withdrew the needle and stoppered the vial. 

“It’s alright, Fitz, you can look now, all done.”

Fitz gave a slight sigh of relief as he turned to face his wife, “Thank you. Now would you mind telling me what that was all about?”

“What? That? Oh, that’s nothing!” Jemma replied a little too brightly, swatting a hand through the air as if to bat away a fly. She gathered up the vile of blood along with two others ( _Just how much blood had she taken?_ Fitz silently wondered) and shoved them to the side of her work station, fumbling briefly to keep them all from rolling away, she propped them between a book and a half drunk mug of tea.

Something was wrong, he could tell. Jemma had grown leaps and bounds in her ability to lie, but she still wobbled a bit when caught by surprise. And Fitz knew her better than anyone, better than he knew himself. He could always tell when she was lying, regardless of how much practice she’d put in.

“Jemma,” he said quietly, “What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing! It’s just...” Jemma sighed, finally giving up the cheerful facade as she crossed her arms and leaned back against the desk. “I’ve just been feeling a bit....off.”

“Off?”

“Just....off. I don’t know. Nothing terrible. Tired. A little queasy. An ache here or there. Bit of congestion. It’s nothing, really. It’s just...” she trailed off.

“It’s just what, Jemma? You wouldn’t be doing blood tests if you really thought it was nothing.” Fitz moved closer to her, taking her hand and pulling it towards him. He held it in both hands and started fiddling with her wedding ring, attempting to calm both their nerves.

“No, no, it really probably is nothing. It’s just, I thought I’d be feeling better by now, but...it’s gotten a little worse the last few days. And then I thought about the past few years - traveling to a dystopian future, then back to the present, then all that time in space searching for you, meeting all kinds of new people and species, coming into contact with all kinds of new things...I just...”

“You’re worried it might be another alien virus?” Fitz finished for her. The thought made his stomach flip again. Fitz has been drowned, shot, and blown up, but nearly losing her to the Chitauri virus had to be one of the top tier scariest moments of his life.

Jemma nodded reluctantly. She kept her head down, her hair falling in a curtain around her face. Fitz lifted one hand to her cheek, brushing her hair aside, silently urging her to look up and meet his gaze. 

“So. Maybe it’s nothing. But neither of us will feel better pretending we’re not concerned. So go run the tests. The sooner you do, the sooner we can figure whatever it is out,” he smoothed his thumb over her skin. “And we _will_ figure it out,” he added, confidently, “That’s what we do.”

Jemma looked up at him with a small smile, then quickly moved to gather up the blood vials and other testing equipment. 

“It really probably is nothing,” she said again, “It’s probably just anemia. Or maybe a vitamin D deficiency! Can’t say I’ve gotten much sunlight in the past...when _was_ the last time I got any sunlight?” she muttered to herself as she set about preparing the tests.

It had been about half an hour since Jemma had started the machine analyzing her blood. After setting it up there wasn’t much more they could do but wait, so to keep their minds off things Jemma got back to work on her neural implant, enlisting Enoch to help with her scans. Fitz went about sorting through the various materials they’d managed to scrape together, trying to find anything that would work with his designs. Considering the amount of work to be done, they certainly didn’t lack distractions.

And yet, Fitz found that he couldn’t keep his mind off of his conversation with Jemma. They’d been through so much. The bottom of the ocean, space, time, their own insecurities. To go through all that and....what if something really was wrong? What if it _was_ something alien? Or _not_ alien? There were plenty of mundane, normal things that could go wrong in a human body. What if she was really sick? What if after all this he really was going to lose her? The universe seemed to constantly be against them, what if it was finally going to win? What if they wasted whatever time they had left together building time machines and neural implants and then she just...?

He couldn’t let himself finish the thought. It was too much. They needed more time. They _deserved_ more time. 

“It’s a good thing we are building a time machine as it does not matter how long it takes,” Enoch’s voice drifted in through the muck of his own thoughts. Had they been having a conversation? Huh. Apparently Fitz had so finely honed his snarky remarks that he could now make them on instinct alone.

“Could you give us a moment?” he said, nudging his head towards the door.

“Yes,” said Enoch, turning back to his tablet.

Fitz rolled his eyes. Thousands of years on Earth studying humanity and the Chronicom still couldn’t get the hint.

Jemma gave Enoch a not unkind look, and the not-a-robot seemed to finally understand. 

“Oh. To yourselves. Of course,” and headed out of the room. Fitz wondered how someone managed to put out such an air of infinite wisdom and absolute cluelessness all at the same time.

“With this working and you in the building phase, we’ll be able to rush back to the temple before we know it,” Jemma said excitedly. At least she seemed to have pushed her earlier nervousness aside.

Fitz watched her tap out calculations on her tablet for a moment. He ran a hand over his face.

“Or not.”

Jemma’s posture stiffened. She slowly turned to face him.

“Enoch’s not wrong. Doesn’t matter how long we take. So...we don’t have to rush. Could just take some time to...live.”

“Fitz,” Jemma began warily. 

No. He wouldn’t let her talk him out of this. They had earned this. They had saved the world countless times. They’d given up so much. They had earned whatever little time they had left together.

“We’ve made a nice home for ourselves here. Could spruce it up. Live. Together. No mission. No end of the world. We could just...be.”

He couldn’t look her in the eye. If he looked her in the eye he’d lose the composure he was desperately struggling to hold on to. He swallowed, his throat burning as he struggled to hold back tears. 

“Is this about the blood work?” Jemma was holding back her own tears. Maybe she hadn’t been as distracted as he thought after all.

“No...and, yeah,” he finally managed to look up, “but because we deserve it. Regardless.”

“We don’t even know if it’s...” Jemma began.

“Listen, if May and Coulson taught us anything,” he paused as Jemma drew in a shaky breath, “it’s that we should take the time that we have.”

Jemma bowed her head slightly. She had to know he was right. They had so much time, yet it felt like they’d never have enough. Fitz put his arm around her neck and she ducked her head to rest on his shoulder. They both stood in silence a moment, contemplating. Trying not to break.

A sudden noise from the corner of the room made them jump. A ratty old printer they’d managed to find somewhere was noisily spitting out paper. The blood analysis was complete. There were Jemma’s lab results, sitting there in the printer tray. Fitz couldn’t help but feel like their fate was inked on that page.

They looked at each other. Jemma took a deep breath, straightened her back, held her head high, and walked over to the printer. She lifted the paper swiftly from the tray and began to read the results.

Fitz watched her closely, bouncing on his toes slightly, unable to contain the nervous energy. He couldn’t read her reaction. She didn’t look upset, which was a good sign, but she did look...confused?

“...Well?” he nearly yelled.

Jemma had hardly moved a muscle. She was still staring down at the results.

“Huh,” she said.

“Huh?” he replied.

Jemma handed him the paper, staring off into the middle distance, lost in thought.

Fitz tried to keep his hands steady, his eyes running down the page, carefully reading each result. Iron levels were fine. Blood count was good. She _was_ a little deficient in Vitamin D, but nothing that a few pills couldn’t fix. Everything looked good so far, so what had Jemma so spooked? He kept reading, until he finally got to...

“Huh,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jemma replied, still slightly dumbfounded.

“Jemma, it’s been awhile since I last studied blood results but...am I wrong or does an elevated hCG level mean...”

Jemma finally looked at him.

“I’m pregnant,” she said in disbelief.

They stood in silence for another moment, side by side, leaning against the little table that held the ratty little printer that had just changed their lives.

“But I thought you were on the...” Fitz poked himself in the arm with his finger, mimicking an injection.

“I was...though, considering all the time travel. And then the space travel. And then the alien invasions. I guess it’s been longer than I thought since my last shot. I was a little distracted.”

“Right, with the time travel and the aliens and all...” Fitz said, still in a daze.

Jemma gave her head a little shake, attempting to bring her mind back into focus.

“Fitz,” she began slowly, as though she were about to approach a sleeping bear, “Are you....is this...okay?”

Fitz started out of his fog. She was asking _him_ if this was okay? He should be the one asking after her!

“Jemma, are _you_ okay? This is just...there’s so much to think about now! You can’t go flying around in a time ship! That can’t be safe! Are you still feeling queasy? Maybe we have saltines somewhere,” Fitz started roaming around the room lifting up papers and opening drawers as if he would miraculously find some saltines secreted away in their lab, “And the implant! There’s no way you should be injecting things into your brain while you’re pregnant. Not to mention all the incredibly dangerous equipment everywhere. Jemma, we have _blow torches_! More than one! How do you baby-proof a blow torch?”

“Fitz! Stop!” Jemma rushed over to him, grabbing his hands away from the drill he was trying to shove into a desk drawer. They stood there a moment, Jemma holding him by the hands. 

“Let’s just. Take a minute,” Jemma began. She was quiet a moment, seemingly trying to gather her thoughts. Finally, she spoke, “Fitz, if we were just a normal couple, just two normal people living normal lives back on Earth. No aliens. No time travel. No Chronicoms. Just an average couple living our lives.....how would you feel about this?”

Fitz took a breath. Closed his eyes. He tried to imagine living a normal life. Driving a normal car home from a normal job. He imagined walking into a cottage with a garden and a mailbox and seeing Jemma standing in front of him with a little plastic stick bearing a plus sign on it. He imagined holding a tiny warm bundle in his arms. The tiny warm bundle had Jemma’s nose and he wasn’t sure he could hold all the love he had in him for the tiny warm bundle with Jemma’s nose. He might burst with joy.

Fitz opened his eyes, suddenly realizing he was smiling so wide his cheeks were beginning to ache. He looked at Jemma, wearing a smile to mirror his own.

“We’re having a baby,” he said in awe.

“We’re having a baby,” Jemma nodded, happy tears forming in her eyes. 

Fitz moved like lightning. In an instant he’d bent down and swept Jemma off her feet and into his arms, carrying her the way he’d never had a chance to on their wedding night. Jemma shrieked in surprise, then laughed as she brought her hands to either side of his face and pulled him into a kiss.

There was a quiet shuffling from the doorway.

“Is everything alright? I heard yelling,” Enoch asked, moving into the room.

“Everything’s great, Enoch. Really, really great. Now if you’ll excuse us, I think we’re going to take the rest of the day off. My wife and I need to be alone for a bit. Nothing to worry about. Human stuff!” Fitz called out to Enoch as he carried Jemma out of the lab and towards their bunk.

They could afford to take a few hours to celebrate. They had time.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote something? Me? I couldn’t help it, the story wouldn’t stop swirling around my brain.
> 
> Please forgive any mistakes or awkward sentence structure. Unbeta-ed and hastily edited. And written on a phone. Yeah. I’m that girl.


End file.
